Two great dishes.
The only similarity I can find between these two recipes is that they are both cake recipes. One, a standard cake. The other, a pasta cake. Or maybe neither can be called a cake because both contain vegetables and no respectable person would call vegetables cake. These recipes are not for respectable people or cake purists.
Gary and I spent the weekend in Marblehead so, I had to adapt to cooking in someone else's kitchen. In deciding what recipes to cook, I looked for recipes that were not very taxing in terms of bowl, pan, and utensil use. I also wanted to make sure that I wouldn’t be in the kitchen for hours baking while the weekend spun away. I accomplished neither of those things. The three steps listed in the lasagne recipe fooled me into believing I would whip through it in a breeze, while my brain led me to believe that the cake would not take very long - no longer than a standard cake, that is. The bake time alone was 1.25 hours.
Despite the time and resource commitment, these turned out great.
Lasagne
My favorite part of this recipe is the spelling of the word. I thought it was simply a New Jersey-ism. Similar to how many people from New Jersey say water (wuh-ter) instead of water (wah-ter). A quick Wikipedia search taught me that lasagne is actually the plural of lasagna. Technically, the title is correct and so is lasagna with an a. But, every time Betty says lasagne noodles, she’s basically saying noodles noodles. (Noodles noodles would be a good name for a ramen restaurant, though). Sorry, Betty. She’s not alone, though. There are three other lasagne recipes in the Salem County Cookbook.
The meat sauce, step one of the recipe, was supposed to simmer for forty-five minutes, something else I didn't take into account when choosing this “short recipe”. I made it first so that it not only had the longest time possible to simmer, but I also didn't have to wait until 10pm to serve. That being said, all of the following steps took close to 45 min anyway so the sauce got the simmerin’ it deserved despite my not allocating adequate time for it. It also helped that I decided not to add the half cup of water to the pot. That would have extended the simmer time into the early morning.
I've never made meat sauce before this, so i don't know the proper technique, but something about adding a big hunk of raw meat to a pot of cooked tomatoes seems unappetizing and just wrong. It ended up being delicious.
After I got the meat sauce going, I started what I thought was a bechamel. Upon further research, I found that my hours of singing “Bechameellllll, bechameelll muuuuchoooo” (to the tune of Besame Mucho by Andrew Bocelli) had been completely unfounded. What this recipe calls for is a mornay sauce which is just a pretty name for a bechamel with cheese. A mornay, for those of you who, like me, have only ever heard the word on Food Network but have never created one by name, is the sauce you add to mac and cheese, assuming your recipe doesn't come from a Velveeta box.
While the mornay was brewin’, I cooked the lasagne (plural of lasagna, see?). Just follow the box.
Though I do not like to stray from the recipes, I had to use my best judgement and go off script during the layering process. The recipe said to start by laying down a layer of noodles first. I’m not expert, but every other lasagna I’ve made has told me to start with sauce first. I didn’t want to burn anything this late in the game so I spread some meat sauce down then noodle then more meat sauce then cheese sauce then noodle then meat sauce then cheese sauce ad nauseum.
After the recipe-dictated 20 minutes of cooking, I deemed the lasagna not bubbly or brown enough and flipped on the broiler. I removed it from the oven once the cheese sauce on top started to look like the top of a cheese pizza. This may have been a little too late - the top was slightly too crispy. That could also be due to improper allocation of cheese sauce throughout the cake resulting in not having enough for the top layer.
When we first ate it, I would have said that the lack of ricotta made the lasagne seem less fatty than other lasagna’s I’ve had. This morning that opinion changed when I opened up the tupperware I was keeping it in and had to scrap large clumps of fluorescent orange fat from the bottom of the container. Thank you butter, oil, and unseared beef!
The end state was a delicious lasagne but not what I would consider a classic preparation of lasagna. It is lasagnE after all… Stay tuned to Bound Kitchen for that. There are other lasagne recipes on the very next page of the cookbook that have ricotta.
Carrot cake
Baking without the proper measuring tools is difficult. But, I think I did pretty well while making due with dinnerware teaspoons and tablespoons. Delicious end product aside, I will have to be bribed to bake in an unfamiliar kitchen again unless given an inventory list ahead of time.
The cake part of the cake, or the crumb as Mary Berry would say, was pretty straight forward. I used a box grater to grate a bunch of carrots. I had to eyeball the exact amount, but I would say that I ended with two cups, possibly more. For the 3/4ths cups of nuts, I chose walnuts. It seemed the most appropriate nut. I think I ended up adding more than the listed amount of cinnamon because of my measuring utensils, but I found no flaw in that. More cinnamon is always better in these spice cakes.
As the recipe commands, I mixed them all together and baked for an hour and fifteen minutes. I checked the cake after that time and determined it needed a little longer so I let it sit for two more minutes then pulled it out to cool in its pan on the counter. All in all, the cake took almost 2 hours to make uniced. So much for not spending too much time in the kitchen.
The icing gave me a bit more trouble than the cake. The recipe suggests adding two teaspoons of rum flavoring to the icing - a suggestion I took, obviously. Otherwise, it would have just been a buttercream. I've never heard of rum flavoring, but i've always assumed that if something is advertised as rum flavored that it just has rum in it. Say, for instance, rum cake and rum raisin ice cream, a dish I do not agree with based on very similar logic as the cake-purists comments above. Raisins ruin dessert.
Anyway, due to my flawed logic above, I also assumed that someone would resort to using rum flavoring instead of straight rum if they wanted to avoid the inclusion of alcohol in their dish. The expression I made, a wince I can only relate to taking a shot of rum that was previously in a plastic bottle adorned with a knock-off pirate on the bottom shelf of a liquor store, after tasting a fingerful of this icing proved that thought very wrong. After only a small taste, I smelled like I had been sneaking swigs of a flask over the past two hours of baking. The icing was inedible. Betty Geohagen must’ve liked her booze. (To be fair to Betty, it could also be that I skimped on my ingredients list and went for the first rum flavoring I could find instead of hunting for a high quality, lower alcohol content, brand. Either way, far too boozy to serve to good company).
I dumped half in the bin and supplemented with more butter, milk, and 10x sugar. I kept the icing pretty loose so that I could drizzle it over the cake. Tube pan cakes should always be iced in this way. Not only does it look decadent, but also it takes less time and reduces the frustration of not having perfected my icing techniques yet.
In my opinion, the cake turned out perfect. The slow-and-low baking technique left the crumb moist and the minimal amount of less-rummy icing created the perfect icing to cake ratio in every bite. This is a recipe I will definitely be making again.
Two wins here and honestly, thank goodness. I knew there were going to be some funky recipes in this book, but I don’t think my ego could bare making an avocado-slop-esque recipe every week.